Moneymaker's the name, poker's my game

The line of players anxious to lose their money to poker superstar Chris Moneymaker was a long
one.

“We had a waiting list of 70 people to play at his table,” said Matt Dodd, the boss of the
36-table poker room at Hollywood Casino Columbus.

Moneymaker is now the casino’s poker ambassador, a job that apparently pays him to come to
Columbus once a month for a whirlwind weekend of poker and to win a lot of money from local
players.

He got here on Friday afternoon.

“I played until 4:30 in the morning, slept some, and then played another 12 hours,” he said. “
People want to take their shot against you, some want to say they won a hand against you or put a
move on you.”

“A move” is a bluff, as in raising the stakes when you don’t have a winning hand, hoping the
other players will believe you have better cards than they do – and fold like a scared rabbit.

“It’s a game of chicken and who steps off the tracks first,” Moneymaker said.

There are probably several more animal metaphors, but I’ll call with a rabbit and a chicken.

I met Moneymaker on Wednesday at the casino, during a press conference in the poker room, and he
said he’d won a total of $9,000 since he’d arrived in Columbus. Not a bad week of work.

While he lived up to his surname, this doesn’t mean Moneymaker didn’t lose a lot of hands along
the way to novice and experienced players.

“It’s a game of percentages and anything can happen in one night,” he said. “But if you were to
play for two weeks, the better player would win.”

And this, he said, is what professional poker players count on and make their living from.